can't say it isnt targeted, you're probably gonna get a lot of not brokens here. buying anything from a popup is insane anyway.

nice how that one ellipses wraps to another line.

Posted by: gmangw at December 29, 2005 12:30 AM

Reminds me of the old cartoon where the guy picks up a brick that's been thrown through his window, and there's a note attached to it for 'Joe's Window and Glass Repair'

Posted by: Michael McWatters at December 29, 2005 01:00 AM

whats really broken is the fact that internet exploder was being used to surf the web

Posted by: moi at December 29, 2005 01:04 AM

Well, this IS an ad for a 'toolbar', which means it's also probably packaged with spyware/annoying 'features'.

I guess as long as people can make money doing it, there will always be a market for this crap.

Posted by: Andrew Bakke at December 29, 2005 01:05 AM

what's broken is that there are people out there that actually CLICK on these things!! because if there weren't, then the ads wouldn't be there. i say it's really this very broken .01% of the population that's ruined it for the rest of us.

microsoft is partly to blame too, simply because microsoft is the devil...

Posted by: bobert at December 29, 2005 02:37 AM

What is broken is that you are using IE. Switch to Firefox!

Posted by: piscinero at December 29, 2005 09:02 AM

thnx for sharing. i had to enable pop-ups to comment here. use Firefox. and make sure you have the latest Security updates from Microsoft.

I downloaded FireFox like everyone recommended, and i found no reason not to use IE. In fact, even though i downloaded FireFox i prefer IE because i'm used to it and it supports all sites. FireFox, i found, wasn't really any different.

Except it has a lot less security holes and you get a LOT less pop ups. I'm sure there is quite a few more advantages to Firefox, but those two are why I use it. And like you said, it isn't really different, which is a plus in my mind so you don't have to relearn how to use your browser.

Posted by: Tim at December 29, 2005 09:56 AM

I have the yahoo toolbar which blocks popups just fine (nearly forgot all about them existing). Whats funny is that yahoo blocks its own popups when someone views a geocities site!

"Note that you can get infected if you visit a web site that has an image file containing the exploit. Internet Explorer users might automatically get infected. Firefox users can get infected if they decide to run or download the image file.

In our tests (under XP SP2) older versions of Firefox (1.0.4) defaulted to open WMF files with "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer", which is vulnerable. Newer versions (1.5) defaulted to open them with Windows Media Player, which is not vulnerable...but then again, Windows Media Player is not able to show WMF files at all so this might be a bug in Firefox. Opera 8.51 defaults to open WMF files with "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer" too. However, all versions of Firefox and Opera prompt the user first."

Read that again--you don't have to click a single thing to get infected if you're using IE. Opera and Firefox users aren't immune, but it at least takes SOME user interaction. Windows is broken, and IE is incredibly broken.

Posted by: Dave at December 29, 2005 12:33 PM

Same as above. Firefox will prevent many things from happening. And as to using shareaza, don't let other people see that. If someone can get a handle on your information, they can exploit that. Keep a copy of IE for the sites that still require it, but most now will support firefox. Mircosoft and McAfee are two that don't support firefox.

Posted by: Gamer at December 29, 2005 02:38 PM

People who download things like that should be beaten.(and I am talking a serious prison riot style beating)* But as far as marketing goes, not broken, I'm sure they reel in the idiots

*This is in no way intended to advocate violence. This is sarcastic

Posted by: Ron at December 29, 2005 06:44 PM

"Also, this window continued to appear about 10 times after i kept closing it"

You have spyware.

Posted by: asdfasdfsadf at December 29, 2005 07:35 PM

It probably is spyware; one must download a free program to get rid of it. It's true that annoying people rarely gets your product downloaded, but those scams do work when the victim is an ignorant six-year-old kid; I've seen people who get their computer fixed every month on accound of spyware and such...;^)

Posted by: Zero?.! at December 29, 2005 08:25 PM

To truly see a major difference between IE and FireFox:

1. Delete all cookies

2. Spend a standard length session online using IE

3. Count haw many cookies you have (each on is potentially an access point for spyware)

4. Repeat steps 1-3 using firefox.

that was the quick version. for the extended version:

1. Using a reputable anti-spyware program clean your computer.

2. spend 1 day surfing with IE

3. Clean your computer with the same program

4. spend 1 day surfing with Firefox

5. Clean your computer with the same program

The difference is astounding enough to convert even the most skeptical critic.

Posted by: Nathan at December 29, 2005 08:45 PM

would someone care to explain to me why cookies are so evil?

Posted by: gmangw at December 29, 2005 09:42 PM

cause they're usually loaded with sugar and fat.

Posted by: FattyJ at December 29, 2005 10:16 PM

@Gamer

There is no need to keep IE on hand, if you can get Opera instead and set it to identify itself as IE

Posted by: moi at December 29, 2005 11:03 PM

Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet?

1) Don't use Shareza. Or any other 'p2p' programs (Gnutella, ed2k, FastTrack, BitTorrent, etc.), especially on Windows, UNLESS it is used for legal purposes. Many files on p2p have viruses and spyware.

2) Don't use IE. IE is an old browser, with Trident, compared to Opera, Gecko and KHTML + variants.

3) If at all possible, don't use Widows. Unix has been a powerful secure system (Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X) since the 60's. Dual boot with Linux, use Mac, or wait until Apple switches to Intel which gives you the option of all 3 (triple boot Win/Lin/Mac) and maybe any X86 to run any of the 3.

that pop up crap probably has a whole slew of spyware and @#$% with it anyways...

Posted by: daniel at December 31, 2005 03:26 AM

somebody? anybody? im tired of hearing cookies talked about like theyre on the level of viruses and spyware. people use them to justify ie's brokenness (im not denying that). theyre the only product of nathan's xperiment. but ive never heard why theyre actually so bad. what harm can they really do?

I logged into my blogging site and got a string of popups like that using IE. But never found spyware.

I still dont understand what the big deal is about Firefox? I have firefox, Opera, and IE on my computer. But I think opera is very easy to use and has the least amount of security problems. And you can get it to pose as IE.

(dose anyone find it odd that i have a apple sticker on my PC computer?)

I'm going to answer gmangw's question about cookies being talked about like spyware. Basically, they are quite often spyware. IE allows websites to put "tracking cookies" on. (I think Mozilla does, too, but like Nathan proved, not nearly as much.) These track your web browsing and send the info to the company that made it.

Has anyone ever heard or seen the index.dat file? It can never be deleted under windows, except by special programs. And it has a list of all cookies you've ever had through IE.

Posted by: Brian at January 9, 2006 09:27 PM

To delete the index.dat file, simply restart windows in safe mode with command prompt and delete the file. Back when I browsed with IE, I did this weekly.

Posted by: eBob at January 12, 2006 10:05 PM

Some jack*ss wrote:

"Except it has a lot less security holes"

Did you ever consider that IE is attacked more than other browsers? Get the same people who find the security holes to attack another browser and they will find them. Do you really think that programmers of other browsers are THAT much more intelligent than the people writing IE that they cannot infiltrate Firefox?

"I'm sure there is quite a few more advantages to Firefox,"

Apparently, grammar check ARE not one of them.

In addition, also broken is the fact that it's a pop-up telling you how to stop pop-ups!

Posted by: god at January 18, 2006 10:32 PM

Linux has as many security vulnerabilities as Windows, according to CERT.

"It might not feel like it, but Windows suffered fewer security vulnerabilities than Linux and Unix during 2005.

Linux and Unix experienced more than three times as many reported security vulnerabilities than Windows, according to the mighty US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) annual year-end security index.

Windows experienced 812 reported operating system vulnerabilities for the period between January and December 2005, compared to 2,328 for Linux and Unix."